29 September 2023 , 18:07
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A twisted killer who murdered his British wife and hung her pet dog, before trying to blame their deaths on burglars, has been told he will not be freed until at least 2048.
Pilot Babis Anagnostopoulos killed 19-year-old wife Caroline Crouch back in 2021 in the home they shared in an Athens suburb, leaving her tied dead to their bed and placing their baby daughter Lydia next to her, before hanging the family's pet husky from the bannister. He was found by police handcuffed with duct tape over his eyes and mouth in a different room, but after 37 days he finally admitted he staged the break-in and had smothered the mother of his young child with a pillow after an argument.
A Greek appeals court told him today that he won't walk free until at least 2048. He must serve “life and more” after calling the murder of Caroline Crouch as “one of the world’s most heinous crimes". Upholding the verdict of a lower court, the former pilot was shown little clemency with judges deciding, unanimously, that he was not only guilty of the murder of Crouch in May 2021 but had been utterly deceitful in trying to evade arrest.
Anagnostopoulos and Caroline on their wedding day in 2019 (Instagram)
Caroline and baby Lydia (Caroline Crouch/Instagram)Anagnostopoulos had originally claimed the burglars demanded cash and jewellery, and fled with about £10,000 worth of euros hidden in a Monopoly box. He said the could had that kind of money on hand because they needed to pay builders. He told police he managed to wriggle free and call for help using his mobile phone.
His story fell apart after detectives spent hours going through text messages and data from the couple's mobile phones and other devices. Ms Crouch's fitness tracker, data from Anagnostopoulos' mobile phone, and CCTV from the home in the upscale neighbourhood, helped crack the case.
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A fitness tracker on Ms Crouch's wrist showed intense heart activity just after 4am and her heart stopping at about 4.11am, about an hour before burglars were alleged to have stormed into the home, it was reported. It is alleged that data from Anagnostopoulos' phone showed him moving from the attic to the basement of the home, and back again, despite him claiming he had been tied up in a room.
The memory card from a security camera inside the living room had been removed at 1.20am. Police claim it was removed by the husband and flushed down the toilet.
Anagnostopoulos admitted to killing his wife (Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock)A state prosecutor described the self-confessed killer as “the “definition of manipulation”, urging appeals court judges to ensure he spent the rest of his life behind bars. “He should be given the toughest punishment possible,” the magistrate told the court. “There are no margins for any mitigation.”
Defence lawyers, urging mitigation, had argued the 35-year-old had been “an excellent student and very good person who loved animals, someone with a totally different image until the crime. “ In a long-running trial last year, he was not only handed him a life sentence for suffocating the British student, but given an additional 11 and a half years for deliberately perverting the course of justice and choking Caroline’s pet husky, Roxy, in a bid to make the crime look more real.
Friday’s decision is almost unheard of in Greek law, where the guilty party's penalty is nearly always reduced on appeal. But in the case of Anagnostopoulos, the tribunal’s presiding judge said there could be no leniency because he had been “found guilty of every act.” Friday’s judgment means that the former helicopter pilot will not be set free from the top-security Malandrinos prison in central Greece until 2048 when he is close to sixty.
Eleni Mylonopoulou, a psychologist who held counselling sessions with Caroline when the young Brit began to fear her marriage was collapsing, told judges she was convinced he had “not shed a tear” when the teenager took her last breaths in the couple’s rented maisonette in Athens.
Anagnostopoulos lied to reporters (Athena Pictures/REX/Shutterstock)UK-born Ms Crouch is reportedly moved to Greece when she was eight, and raised on the island of Alonnisos, by her British father, David Crouch, and Filipina mother, Susan Dela Cuesta. Caroline’s daughter Lydia, who has since been resettled in the Philippines, with her grandmother and Caroline’s half-sister, has recently acquired Filipino citizenship and would no longer have any ties with Anagnostopoulos or his parents.
Caroline's father David said: “My small treasure Lydia has taken the name of her mother and will not have any contact with his parents. Nothing can take her away from the Philippines now.” Caroline had first met Anagnostopoulos, who is 12 years her senior, when she was a child. They began dating when she was in her teens and got married in Portugal in 2019.
Their daughter Lydia was born in June 2020 and is now three years old.
Caroline was just 19 when she died (Babis Anagnostopoulos/Instagram)
Her daughter is now being brought up in the Philippines with her grandmother (Caroline Crouch/Instagram)A friend of Ms Crouch claimed to Greek news site Ethnos that Anagnostopoulos was jealous and controlling, and Ms Crouch was not happy in the relationship. It is alleged that Ms Crouch had enough and was preparing to end her marriage before she was killed. The friend said: "This was not a happy couple, but a troubled relationship. He was jealous of her and would let her do almost nothing. She could not have the time she wanted with her friends and she was constantly expressing her complaints about his behaviour."
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The case shocked Greece and sparked a debate about national security, as Anagnostopoulos had initially told police that his wife was killed by a foreign gang. But a police union official said on Friday that the husband was a suspect from the very start and officers played along with the burglary claims.